Guilford has two 3-week terms bookending our academic year. Students take only one class and it meets every day. The Peripatetic Studio is a class on walking as a studio practice and creative tool. It emerged on short order to replace my intro welding course when things went online, spring 2019. I thought we needed to be as healthy and happy as possible through the duress of the early pandemic. Students gave real heart to their work. Every day they had an synchronous “lecture”, ideation and critique sessions, a prompted two-hour walk, and an assigned representation of it to share the next day.
Most prompts were basically audienceless, but prompted for a walking performance, Evan Poag formed a one person, one dog climate march.
A walk avoiding flowers by Caro Worley
A four mile walk in the shape of a turtle by Julia Hudson
“Gelopi Drift” video, clothing and contraptions by Max Kotsonis
This prompt asked for a walk that left a trace. Julius Burch made his dragging a rake.
A very slow walk by Bo Green
A video still from a book balancing walk by Sachi Dely
The prompt asked students to create a custom scavenger hunt. Clare Chalkley’s map located her finds.
The slow walk prompt lead Connor Brady to consider the burdens we walk with, and to creating this video.
“Foot Drawing 2” from a walk by John Ellis